With the digital progress that is happening all around the globe, it has become necessary to give resolutions to any problems that arise at the earliest. Customer service is valuable for the company to stay active in the market and respond appropriately to any problems that customers might experience.
Keeping current customers happy will result in more revenue and a good reputation. Nowadays, every company that comes under daily needs and upgradable services provides customer care service on call 24/7. Some companies do it on their own and some outsource the service to enhance productivity.
Telelink is service provider to other companies that need 24/7 call answering solutions to improve their customer service. Dedicated emergency response, journey management, 24/7 front office support service, and inbound call centre services are expertise of Telelink.
To stay in the market, just providing good services will keep you stable, but by doing marketing and sales will boost up to new achievements, Lucas Dower, the Director of Marketing worked well with Telelink’s sales team to make the company reach new heights.
In a recent interview, we asked a few questions to the team of Telelink, read the following Q&A to know more about the organization and the featuring person.
Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a trusted outsourcing partner.
Telelink is a Canadian Response Centre that has been in business for over 55 years. Telelink provides live call answering services to keep our customers business lines open 24/7, improve customer service, and ensure no calls go unanswered. What we do, however, is almost as important as what we don’t do, which is outbound sales and outbound calling. At Telelink, we train and hire for a specific set of skills; customer-oriented thinkers, and customer service specialists, not salespeople. Knowing what we don’t want to serve makes us better able to focus on what we do want to be great at.
Telelink is the only ISO 9001:2015 certified call centre in Canada and is known for its dedication to continuous improvement and innovation. This certification ensures that all of our processes are documented and refined consistently.
Telelink serves a diverse range of clients including municipalities, law firms, utilities, and property management firms.
Shed some light on your offerings and how they impact the industry and your clients?
Our fastest growing, and one of our most popular offerings is our ‘Property Management Specialty’ division. The impact this division is making is truly incredible. Often times, property management firms, or smaller property managers will come to us overworked and overwhelmed. Property Management is a demanding industry and managers are often dealing with high on-call maintenance costs and an inconsistent triage process, which further frustrates tenants.
With Telelink’s specialty property management division, the customer feels like their properties are maintained and their tenants have been heard. Our custom reports highlight the key trends that enable preventative maintenance, and they have a feeling of accomplishment after reducing overtime costs. Ultimately, they are able to respond to tenants quicker, make tenants happier, and even have a better work-life balance themselves
Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on the impact of adopting modern technologies within the business outsourcing space and what more could be expected in the future?
One thing we know for sure: customers want to be served when and where it is convenient for them – and they don’t want to wait.
One of the biggest reasons customers choose Telelink for 24/7 call coverage is because they know that if a potential customer calls them and they are not open, the customer will not wait until the following day; they will call a competitor immediately.
It’s critical to any customer retention and satisfaction strategy that customers are able to reach you when they want, and through the preferred channel. For some, that’s a phone call with a live person, for others it’s email, and for the younger generation it’s often through social media.
Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?
Telelink quickly mobilized our entire workforce to become a fully remote operation in March of 2020. Within 3 days we had moved from our office of 80-100 people to a fully remote operation. I can recall, at the time of the first wave in the pandemic how some call centres were devastated by the COVID-19 virus. The nature of the layout of call centres makes outbreaks a very real possibility, so we knew that Telelink couldn’t take those chances with our team.
We faced some of the same challenges as the rest of the world, labour shortage, unpredictable cancellations, but also unpredictable spikes in our call traffic as well. We’ve leaned into a rural hiring strategy which has allowed us to hire some of our best talent ever and found some truly amazing people to add to our team. All told, we increased our workforce by roughly 50% during the pandemic.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the business outsourcing services market?
It’s funny, the same advice a BPO firm would give to its clients is probably the same advice they ought to follow. That is, know what you do well, focus on it, and outsource the other stuff!
If you’re a graphic design BPO firm, don’t worry about being the best SEO firm too, just focus on your core strengths. For Telelink, that meant focusing on providing exceptional customer service and not worrying about outbound contract opportunities.
How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021 and further?
Telelink is scaling through acquisitions right now. In June of 2021, we completed our first strategic acquisition with the purchase of Big Sky Call Centers based in Calgary, Alberta.
The addition of Big Sky gives us important boots on the ground in western Canada, where many of our customers are headquartered. As we keep our eyes open for the next acquisition, we’ll be looking for organizations that have a similar culture to Telelink as well as a diverse customer base.
About the Leader
Lucas has been with Telelink for nearly 3 years. With a background in Digital Marketing Lucas helped propel Telelink’s lead generation strategy to new heights since he’s joined the team. Telelink’s marketing strategy went from ad hoc campaigns to implementing marketing strategies that align with Telelink’s corporate objectives.
Success in b2b marketing cannot be found without a great sales team backing it up. Lucas works closely with Telelink’s amazing sales team who help buyers make informed decisions and provide the marketing team with real-time feedback on lead quality and messaging with their target audiences.
